Cross (Alex Cross 12)

MICHAEL SULLIVAN HAD BEEN USING the name Michael Morrissey since he’d been living in Massachusetts, Morrissey being a punk he’d more or less drawn and quartered in his early days as a hit man. Caitlin and the boys kept their first names but went under the surname Morrissey now too. The story they had learned by heart was that they had been living in Dublin for the past few years, where their father was a consultant to several Irish companies with business connections to America.

Now he was doing “consultant” work in Boston.

The latter part happened to be true, since the Butcher had just gotten a job through an old contact in South Boston. A job—a hit, a murder for hire.

He left the house overlooking the river that morning at a very civilized nine o’clock. Then he headed down to the Massachusetts Turnpike in his new Lexus. He had his work tools in the trunk—guns, a butcher saw, a nail gun.

He didn’t play any music on the first part of the trip, preferring to travel down memory lane instead. Lately, he’d been thinking a lot about his early kills: about his father, of course; a couple of jobs for Maggione Sr.; and a Catholic priest named Francis X. Conley. Father Frank X had been messing around with boys in the parish for years. The rumors were all around the neighborhood, the stories laced with plenty of kinky, slimy detail. Sullivan couldn’t believe that some of the parents knew what was going on and hadn’t stepped up to do something to stop it.

When he was nineteen and already working for Maggione, he happened to spot the priest down at the docks, where Conley kept a little outboard for his fishing trips. Sometimes he would take one of the altar boys for an afternoon. A reward. A little sweet treat.

On this particular day in the spring, the good father had come down to the dock to prepare his boat for the season. He was working over the engine when Sullivan and Jimmy Hats stepped on board.

“Hey, Father Frankie,” Jimmy said, and beamed a crooked smile. “How ’bout we take a little boat trip today? Do some fishin’?”

The priest squinted up at the two young hoods, frowning when he recognized who it was. “I don’t think so, boys. Boat’s not ready for action yet.”

That brought a laugh from Hats, who repeated, “Ready for action—yeah, I get you.”

Then Sullivan stepped forward. “Yeah, it is ready, Fodder. We’re goin’ on a sea cruise. You know that song? Frankie Ford’s ‘Sea Cruise’? That’s where we’re goin’. Just the three of us.”

So they cruised on out of the boatyard, and Father Frank X was never seen or heard from again. “God rest his immoral soul in hell,” Jimmy Hats joked on the way back.

And that morning, as he drove out on his latest job, Sullivan remembered the old Frankie Ford song—and he remembered how the pathetic priest had begged for his life, and then for his death, before he got cut up into shark food. But most of all, he remembered wondering whether he had just done a good deed with Father Frank,

and whether or not it was possible that he could.

Could he do anything good in his life?

Or was he just all bad?

Chapter 107

HE FINALLY ARRIVED IN STOCKBRIDGE, near the Massachusetts-New York border, and used his GPS to find the right house. He was ready to do his worst, to be the Butcher again, to earn his day’s wage.

To hell with good deeds and good thoughts, whatever they were supposed to prove. He located the house, which was very “country” and, he thought, very tasteful. It sat on a tranquil pond in the middle of acres of maples and elms and pines. A black Porsche Targa was parked like a modern sculpture in the driveway.

The Butcher had been told that a forty-one-year-old woman named Melinda Steiner was at the house—but that she drove a spiffy red Mercedes convertible. So who did the black Porsche belong to?

Sullivan parked off the main road behind a copse of pines, and he watched the house for about twenty minutes. One of the things he noticed was that the garage door was closed. And maybe there was a fine red Mercedes convertible in the garage.

So—once again—who owned the black Porsche?

Careful to stay under the cover of thick branches, he put a pair of German binoculars to his eyes. Then he slowly scanned the east and south windows of the house, each and every one of them.

No one seemed to be in the kitchen—which was all darkened windows, no one moving about.

Or in the living room, either, which was also dark and looked deserted.

But somebody was in the house, right?

He finally found them in a corner bedroom on the second floor. Probably the master suite.

Melinda, or Mel, Steiner was up there.

And some blond dude. Probably in his early forties, presumably the owner of the Porsche.

Too many mistakes to calculate, he was thinking to himself. A real cluster-fuck of errors.